The Robots Win Again: Keep Calm and Carry On

The march of automation has just chalked up another success for businesses. The robots have won again. And right now, anyone working in finance, IT operations or public relations should be cheering or, at least, breathing a huge sigh of relief. The breakthrough relates to recordings of customer calls.

But if recording technology does its job, there’s nothing to worry about, right?

Today, financial institutions must be absolutely sure they can record, store and retrieve calls – to stay compliant with ever-toughening regulations. Everyone is affected, from investment banks and traders, to retail banks, insurers and financial services companies of every description.

So if you’re recording then yes, everything should be ok. In practice, things can and do go horribly wrong – with costly consequences. Spot-checks from the regulator are a distinct possibility, turning turn the spotlight on a technology that really hasn’t moved into the 21st century.

Here are three very uncomfortable scenarios:

You need to find a specific call. You check the tapes. With horror, you discover that no calls have been recorded for the past 10 days. No-one realised.

You need to find recordings from particular case. The ones you want are among thousands of undocumented, recorded calls on tape. Worse still, some of the tapes have degraded and are now unplayable – gone forever. You only find some of them – but someone later accuses you of ‘tampering with evidence.’

The regulators wants a specific range of calls involving dozens of custodians over a period of years. You assign an office junior to the task. After two days, nothing is found. So more staff are assigned. Your best people. The regulator breathes down your neck, stress levels rocket and normal business activities are impacted badly. The board gets nervous.

Non-compliance can result in disasters.

Fines are escalating and then there’s reputation damage for your organisation and perhaps even a job dismissal or two. No-one is safe. The axe can fall on IT operations staff, compliance colleagues and even PR people if they make a mess of any news that gets out to the press or social media.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. And this is where the robots whirr into action.

Thanks to some ingenious coding, three new software tools are now available that directly address the problems just described. Put simply, these shiny solutions automate manual processes where humans are prone to fail.

Put simply, there’s a new tool that checks calls are actually being recorded properly. Another retrieves calls from tape securely – saving hours of time. And a third tool lets you locate specific calls – among tens of thousands of recordings – very quickly.

What’s more, you don’t need to rip and replace any equipment. The software simply overlays your existing kit. It’s highly-automated, easy to use and saves you money immediately.